


Walking the Path

by Raynidreams



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raynidreams/pseuds/Raynidreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leoben's thoughts on Kara, final season.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walking the Path

He's seen her at a distance several times now and each time he's flinched back in shame.  The guilt haunts him, troubling his mind more than he ever thought the emotion could.  Since creation, he's known that guilt was an feeling one gained with experience; piling up encounters with it through life for them to come back twice fold at twilight, there to disrupt sleep.  Even so, in all fairness he's never truly felt it until recently.  Never felt the churning well with its cutting bite.  The surviving humans would curse him doubly more than his kind for the sentiment, but realistically he's just one individual with all the selfishness it entails, and since the fall, like everyone else he's been able to discount other peoples lives after they pass in contemplation of his own.  Of hers.

This new found guilt, it burns deep and plague like, infecting nearly everything he does.  His guilt does not come from what they did to the humans, no.  What he feels is from the single most poignant moment between him and her.  The moment when he failed her.  He'd never considered himself a coward and he'd never doubted the depth of love he felt for her, but in that one moment he'd ruined both of these impressions of himself and anything he could have done to help her.

He failed her on Earth; he'd failed them both.

He might have been able to come back from it before, to tread the path to redemption but twice a fool, he'd done it again during the mutiny when he'd allowed his brothers to vote that they run instead of fighting for the fragile peace they'd wrought.

Uselessness and shame eat away at him most days now, but never more than in the times when he sees her.  These one-sided encounters ball up a fist of pure torture within his gut and faster than she can turn to see him, he disappears.  It's been going that way for weeks now, but he's starting to believe that the coward in him is fighting a loosing battle against his will to do right; and perhaps he's learning to be a better person for each time he sees her, he lingers that breath longer to see how she is.  Yes, perhaps he's growing; because even as the fist threatens to floor him or have him steal away into darkness; his lingering to witness to her fading strength calls to some deeper emotion than that of his guilt.  It calls to that stirring of beauty and awe he'd felt the first time he'd tapped in and her rebellious and jubilant cry had rung in his ears.  That instant love he'd felt as she'd limped in, bruised and tired to question him so brutally.

The reason it's getting harder for him to dwell in remorse is that each time he sees her, she looks worse. She shines less and her words and actions are a fraction too automatic to be something honestly felt.  He thought when he'd caught her arguing with the Chief that perhaps the boil of her anger might illicit some truer aspect of her being, but no.  She'd pulled a face, used the vilest words in her vocabulary, looked mean... but it was all an act, and not a very convincing one for others could see through it too.  It'd been the same when he'd turned the corner to find her static in an alcove drinking alone, standing up but facing the grey wall.  He'd have not been worried if she was doing it for fun, for the taste or even to blow off steam.  However in his heart he knew she was doing it just because she used too and was trying to find that thread of her old self again.  He'd felt morning after bitterness rise in his own belly when she dropped the bottle and it'd smashed empty at her feet, for then he'd seen how her face was wet, but not from ambrosia but with broken tears.

Yes, he's guilty and yes he must atone, and perhaps she'd be better off if he just left her be for he knows that her part in this game is not done.  She fading like the autumn, soon to be frozen by winter and yet he feels that the green of spring and the burn of summer will burst forth from her one more time in this revolution of worlds and souls.

He didn't physically see the event today which had her running through the crowd to hide; he'd witnessed in his mind's eye how it'd happened, experiencing the doctor's exposure of her secret almost from within her.  He's shared in the shame of it, the fear of it and perhaps in the tracing of relief that it was now over.  The secret that only he and she had known; the secret he betrayed by his rejection.  His brothers kept asking him about the revelation, about the truth of her death and destiny but he couldn't reply when all his words were poisoned with what he did.

Haunted, he watches now as she faces Apollo and says goodbye in her heart to anything they might have been to one another.  Watch as she replaces that photograph and says goodbye to herself.  His heart breaks.  It bleeds and drowns his wallowing guilt.  He cannot leave her like this again, he cannot. 

He follows quietly and softly some distance behind, and for the first time he offers his support but does not enforce it.  Alert, she tilts her head and sees him but carries on walking.  She doesn't seem to slow and he doesn't consciously speed up yet they end up walking together around the halls.

At each step they take, he feels better, knowing he should have done this before, for he can see that she's taken both the son's and now his acceptance as a mark of her not being anything other than what she is - whatever that maybe.  His hand brushes hers, but he doesn't take hold, simply wills some of the healing he's beginning to feel as he matches her step for step. 

Finally, as they come to some corridor, deep within the heart of the ship he feels he must say something.  He chooses his words, not knowing if they will make any difference to either of them but sensing that they ought to be said.  The words he chooses are often hollow, used as they were daily by people not serious in their intent.  Most times they're uttered, they have no real meaning, but he says them anyway because he truly feels the sentiment within.  He says them because apart from speaking those words, there’s nothing else he can do to help her now.

"I'm sorry."

They're not good enough and she's got no reason to even acknowledge him speak let alone accept their aim, but for once he likes to think that they're on the same page and he believes that she understands he's being genuine.  He's sorry for what he did, for running away... for being afraid of her.  He's sorry for what's happened between them since, and most of all he's sorry for her and what may lay ahead.

Her hand brushes his as they continue walking.


End file.
